Two shots of Common Moorhen illustrating a problem I had with my D800 camera two days before we were ready to head back home. I had just discovered a small swampy area beyond our resort where there was quite a bit of bird activity, when all of a sudden my camera broke down and started taking shots like the one in the top image.

I had not brought a second DSLR body (bad decision) but did have my Nikon P&S with me. I discovered that the mirror on the D800 would not go up all the way; hence, causing the bottom 25 - 50 percent of the image to be black. This of course caused problems with the light metering and exposure compensation resulting in many shots to be very dark. I tried to fix the problem by taking some fast burst shots with the lens off and I managed to get the mirror opening about 80 - 90%. I suspect that it is a shutter problem and I've have sent up my camera to Nikon for repair as soon as we got home.

In spite of the problem, I still managed some good shots of which usually only the top 80% were usable for processing (still better than with my P&S I think). Some turned out to be quite dark throughout which, in my opinion, gave a nice effect when shooting the all white Snowy Egret of which I'll post some images soon.

Top Image. As shot, full frame.


A crop of the top half of the top image

Bob Pelkey (jkrnm5)advised me that these are now known as Common Gallinule (Gallinula Galeata). None of my many bird books show this. They all include only the Purple Gallinule. I discovered on the internet that indeed there had been a split off in 2011. These look the same to me as the ones I saw in The Netherlands some years ago and I have not been able to determine the difference in the two, other than a name and territorial change as follows.

Gallinula Chloropus = Eurasian Moorhen in the Eastern Hemispher. (Formerly Common Moorhen)
Gallinula Galeata = Common Gallinule in the Western Hemispher. (Formerly Common Moorhen)

They are still Common Moorhen to me. Thanks for the heads-up Bob.